This is the tab by which the user can select the items that the user may want considered for the replenishment order. The top part of the screen is the area where the user can make their actual selections. The lower part of the screen will display the items selected. Before talking about the definition of each selection item let's cover how the selection process works.
The user can enter the specific selection criteria (e.g., 09 for vendor) or the user can click on the search button
to the right of the criteria field. Clicking the search button will bring up available values of that criteria field at which point the user can find the value of interest and click on it for selection. The system will filter out any unavailable values based on the rest of the selection criteria. For example, if a Vendor value has been supplied, clicking on the search button for Item will only show items for the selected vendor.
ABC Class may also be used as a filter for the selection process.
Note: If a selection criteria field is left blank the system will select all the item records for that criteria. E.g., if the location is left blank, the system will pull all the items for the vendors selected for all the locations. In fact, if all the selections were left blank the system would pull all the items in the company. In other words, the selection process can be seen as an elimination process, insofar that items not selected are eliminated.
Buttons
The Straight To Order button is used to accumulate items meeting the the current selection criteria and proceed directly to the Order page. This is the most common scenario in which the user will have selected a single set of variables in one or more categories (e.g., one vendor and one location) and are ready to create an order. If previous items have been accumulated, they will remain in the order.
The Accumulate button is used to "gather up" more than one item for a variable (e.g., two locations). Clicking this button accumulate items meeting the the current selection while remaining on the Order Selection page. This can be repeated as often as desired until the set of items for review meets the users satisfaction. When ready to create the order, click the Go to Order third button.
The Exclude Items button removes items that match the current selection criteria from the current order. For example, a user can add a certain vendor and then exclude a single item from the list.
The Go to Order button takes the currently accumulated items and proceeds to the Order page.
The Clear Order button clears out all items from the current order.
Selection Criteria
The Super Vendor designation allows the user to tag a series of SKUs with a specific code that groups vendors for a single order (e.g., three vendors that should all be ordered together in order to fill an overseas container). By putting the same code in the Super Vendor field for each SKU and using that code as the selection criteria, all the SKUs that are related to the three vendors would be pulled without having to specify the actual vendors individually in the vendor field.
The Vendor column and is the most common criteria used to pull the SKUs of interest. This criteria corresponds to the Vendor field in each SKUs item master record.
The Location column represents the location or warehouse where the SKU is delivered from the vendor.
The next two columns are for Group 1 and Group 2 which allow further arbitrary groups of products within vendors, or even cut across vendors. In short, virtually any combination of products can be pulled with the right selection criteria. Note incidentally, any of these designations can mean something other than their label. For example, super vendor could actually mean "buyer", or "Group 1" could be "Product Category" depending on user preference.
Finally, the Items column can be used to isolate specific SKUs.
As mentioned earlier, if a column is not used in the selection process, it is simply ignored (e.g., if a specific vendor is selected but not a location, all locations will be selected for that vendor).
